The United States has lost its competence in the production of small space satellites

a reply to: Hakaiju

Russia's military equipment performance has not exactly done much to inspire potential buyers with any great enthusiasm.

a reply to: RussianTroll

So, on topic, what wonders can your little satellites perform that Western ones can't?

a reply to: RussianTroll

That's why NATO is losing. You have a few extremely expensive weapons, while Russia has the vast majority of simple, like a Kalashnikov assault rifle, and very cheap weapon systems.

Those cheap weapon systems are probably why a third of the black sea fleet including the flag ship got converted to submarines.

a reply to: RussianTroll

Weapons? What's that got to do with your little satellites?

If you want to go on about how effective your weapons are compared to the West, make a thread about it. I could do with a laugh.

originally posted by: RussianTroll

originally posted by: 5thHead
Honestly, I'll go back and read this later, but I'll go ahead and tell you this is absurd.

We invited small satellites!!! Cameras in a little box that floats around the Earth are a no brainer at this point.

Do you know how many small satellites space x puts up in a single falcon launch? Falcon heavy? Well wait for starship, it'll blow your mind.

Google starlink. 💫

Musk's satellites perform an extremely limited function of transmitting bulk data over the Internet. You simply cannot imagine the capabilities and functionality of small reconnaissance satellites.

I can.

I spent 5 years designing and building them for Planet Labs, after a 30 year career designing advanced space missions for NASA, DARPA, and "Other Government" customers. Planet Labs now operates the largest fleet of privately owned Earth observation satellites around the planet.

That article you quoted contains some factual information but misses the main point and comes to the wrong conclusion.

The main point is that we are in the early stages of a revolution in space development, and the US is leading that revolution. That revolution is happening because of two related developments, both of which originated in the US.

The first development was the invention of the cubesat, by a professor at Stanford University and another at California Polytechnic University at San Luis Obispo ("Cal Poly-SLO") around the year 2000. The Stanford professor (Robert Twiggs) was a friend and colleague of mine when I was in graduate school in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford. His motive for the invention of the cubesat was so that university students could have the educational benefit of designing, building, and flying a spacecraft in about the same time and for about the same cost as doing a similar project with a small radio controlled airplane.

Once the cubesat idea took off, people started finding more and more uses for them beyond just educational purposes. By 2010, some other friends and colleagues of mine I worked with at NASA--Chris Boshuizen, Will Marshall, and Robbie Schingler--decided they could design, build, and operate a 3U Earth observation spacecraft cheaply enough and in large enough numbers to take a new image of the planet (at low resolution) once a day. In typical Silicon Valley fashion, they formed the start up company Planet Labs and built their first spacecraft in a garage in Cupertino, CA. Now they are a billion dollar company.

The second development was the creation of SpaceX, by Elon Musk. Elon is truly motivated by the idea of making humans a multi planetary species. In order to do that, he realized that the cost of getting a kilogram of stuff to space had to be reduced by several orders of magnitude to make it all affordable. Many people have had that realization since at least the 1950s, but Elon was the first one to have the right combination of brains, money, and motivation to make it happen. Everyone knew that reusability of the launch vehicle was key to getting the cost down. He set out methodically to make that happen. Today, the Falcon 9, with its recoverable and reusable first stage is by far the lowest cost way to get to orbit in the commercial sector. It is what enables payload developers/operators like Planet Labs and Starlink to have a viable business model.

Once that business model got established, the more conservative users of space (i.e., the government) have slowly started evolving their thinking to take advantage of new possibilities. The US Missile Defense Agency is developing a constellation of Low Earth Orbit satellites to detect and track hypersonic missiles. That will make defense against hypersonic missiles a practical reality. The National Reconnaissance Office has a classified contract with SpaceX to develop a constellation of hundreds of Low Earth Orbit satellites to detect and track surface and air based targets in real time. They will probably include the ability to autonomously track moving targets.

And so on. Elon says that about 95% of all the mass going into space now flies on a Falcon 9. When Starship becomes operational (probably within a year), he says that will go up to 99+%.

That will enable the next phase of the revolution. The cubesat that is currently affordable within the budget of a University department and measures 10 cm on a side and weighs 2 kilograms will become a cube 1 meter on a side and weigh several hundred kilograms. University astronomy departments are already designing orbiting telescopes that will be many, many times more powerful than Hubble and cost a tiny fraction as much. Orbiting laser and other directed energy weapon spacecraft will become possible. The US Marine Corp will finally get their Starship Trooper deployment to anywhere on the planet in 60 minutes that they always wanted.

And so on.

So, it's true that against that background some of the traditional spacecraft component suppliers, like MOOG, are unable to keep up with demand.

a reply to: Kurokage

Yea, I don’t know how they think they could take on NATO when they have been spinning tires for years against a much smaller neighbor nation using hand me downs.

Those frontlines have been largely static.

a reply to: Boomer1947
You will also tell us that the first cosmonaut was a Ukrainian, and the Americans landed on the Moon))))
That's funny)))
Once again, we are not talking about Musk’s satellites, but about completely different ones. Once again I’m explaining this here. Don't you understand?
First you recreate a lunar spacesuit and an orbital toilet, and only then talk about space technology))))
Not a single person in a spacesuit could fit into the lunar module))) Because according to physical laws - no way))))

a reply to: RussianTroll

Did you even read and understand Boomer1947 reply I wonder?
Boomer' was talking about the next generation of small satelites, you just chose to ignore it and go for the usual 'Russia great' propaganda.

Maybe Russia can send up more dogs to die in orbit who can fire the weapons on these super satelites

a reply to: RussianTroll

Newest? Tarted up 60s tech. Do they have backwards launching missiles or something?